"HOUSE BACKS BUSH ON INTERNET STANCE"

Of course they should. Create a "U.N. of the Web"? Are they crazy? Too many cooks in the kitchen will ruin this dinner.

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives said this week that the United States should resist international pressure to give up authority over key Internet functions amid a mounting feud over the issue.

In a letter to Commerce and State Department officials, the lawmakers said the Bush administration should retain strong oversight over the Internet domain name system, specifically the root servers that guide traffic to huge databases containing addresses for all the top-level domains, such as .com, .edu, and the country code domains like .uk and .jp.

"Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying domain name system of the Internet remain stable and secure," the letter said. "As such, the United States should take no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the domain name system. Therefore, the United States should maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file." (full article)